


Spirituality

by cxptained



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Animals, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Ianto Jones, Past Character Death, Post-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood), Sad Jack Harkness, graveyard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:33:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24098125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cxptained/pseuds/cxptained
Summary: "Perhaps it is this knowledge that stops Jack from visiting the graves of the people he’s lost. Or perhaps it is the fact that graveyards bring a sense of guilt to the immortal. He will never lay where they lay. Never experience eternity in the way that they have been granted. He feels guilty for wishing to be in their place because before him lay people of all ages, race and gender. People who were taken too soon, people who suffered in order to get right here.How could Jack sit among those people with the thoughts in his head that, despite the fear; the nothing; the darkness, he would give anything to know that one day a plot beneath the earth could belong to him? That he believes the terror of the afterlife is better than living each given day among the universe until it’s inevitable end?  How would that be fair?"When Jack has a rough day, he finally gets up the courage to visit Ianto's grave. He feels lost without his beloved, but perhaps Ianto Jones has a way of making sure he no longer feels alone.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Spirituality

A tall man stands in a graveyard. He’s adorned in outdated military clothing; his hands are lost within deep pockets and his expression is inscrutable. He moves between the headstones, a hand brushing over each that he passes in a form of respect for those that lie beneath.

Blue hues are searching for something in particular though they look lost and out of their depth. There’s a sense of shame within him that he does not know the placement of the marker he is looking for. Eyes tumble over stones, old and new. Some crumble beneath his touch, and he can’t help but jerk his fingers away from the dying material. One day, nothing will remain of the last memories of each person in this place. Something twists within him.

Jack Harkness is not a spiritual person. In fact, he doesn’t believe in much to do with God at all. Why should he? He’s seen universes formed from a speck of dust. A speck so important its existence begins a whole new creation. He’s seen civilisations pour their heart and soul into all kinds of different higher powers. Not one race had the same ideology. Was he supposed to believe there were millions of different gods for each different species all working in harmony up above?

And, if all that had not been proof enough, Jack was one of the only men in existence that could swear on anything at all that the afterlife did not exist. There had been a time that Jack had wondered, just in passing thought, if maybe it had been different for him. The darkness. The nothing. He couldn’t truly die… so, maybe, he never _truly_ visited the afterlife. Maybe there was something over that rainbow that Captain Jack Harkness just wasn’t privy to see.

_“There’s nothing… just darkness. Jack… **Jack**!”_

Jack’s mind shudders as he’s drawn back to the memory of Owen Harper, panicking in the morgue. The fear in his eyes. The terror on his tongue. Their medic had never been the calmest of people but there was an edge to his tone that Jack had never heard in him before. It frightened him to his very core.

The afterlife was not a kind place to be, it would seem.

Perhaps it is this knowledge that stops Jack from visiting the graves of the people he’s lost. Or perhaps it is the fact that graveyards bring a sense of guilt to the immortal. He will never lay where they lay. Never experience eternity in the way that they have been granted. He feels guilty for wishing to be in their place because before him lay people of all ages, race and gender. People who were taken too soon, people who suffered in order to get right here.

How could Jack sit among those people with the thoughts in his head that, despite the fear; the nothing; the darkness, he would give anything to know that one day a plot beneath the earth could belong to him? That he believes the terror of the afterlife is better than living each given day among the universe until it’s inevitable end? How would that be fair?

Jack is, luckily, pulled out of that spiral of thoughts as he finds the stone he came for. It’s newer than most in here. A clean grey slate against a backdrop of old, yellowing rock. It would be, if Jack has done his time calculations correctly, around a month old.

There are fresh flowers lain in the grass. Jack knows the person beneath this grave, they weren’t a flowers person. Jack is not a spiritual person but, even so, it’s why he doesn’t come bearing some of his own - though there is a present tight within grasp for the recently deceased.

Jack takes his place in front of the headstone.

_In Loving Memory of_

_Ianto Jones_

_9 th July 2009._

He unfurls his fingers as he sits, the gift he brings is tinier than any others already dropped at the foot of the headstone by the visitors the grave has already had. Ianto never spoke much about his family, and what he had learnt wasn’t the happiest of stories but people out there must have at least remembered him enough to care when he died.

No doubt, the largest bunch of flowers are from Gwen, of course. Jack recognises her handwriting looping across the card that comes with it. The second, Jack would assume to be Rhiannon. Anybody else, Jack would stand no chance of guessing. He hates how little he knows.

Jack stares down at his own, now open, palm and inside sits a singular coffee bean. With his free hand, Jack scrapes back some of the dirt into a bowl-like shape and drops the bean inside.

“Alien.” Jack says. His words feel funny in his mouth. It’s the first time he’s spoken since arriving. “The type of bean we found through the rift. You said you’d never had better coffee.” He swallows hard. “I picked them up from a seller I know a few months back when I was in the area. It’ll grow no matter the climate. The Clynations were always better at agriculture than us. Though don’t tell them I said that. They’ve got a bigger ego than me and—”

The captain cuts himself off mid-sentence. He covers the bean over, not caring how the damp earth lodges beneath his fingernails, and pats it back into place.

Silence falls over them again for a long while. Jack sits and he stares, reading the inscription in the stone over and over again. While the grave has only stood for 24 days exactly, Jack himself has been gone for almost an entire year. There’s a guilt that comes with that.

There’s so much guilt inside him today.

“I should have come earlier. I could have picked earlier too, I guess. Didn’t want to risk anyone seeing me. Figured a month out people might stop dropping by unexpectedly.” Jack Harkness is not a spiritual person and yet he’s talking to a grave. Someone he’s certain cannot hear him.

There’s another long silence.

“I came today because I need you, Ianto.” There’s a desperation he’s ashamed of in his voice. “You always said I was a good man, no matter how something ended. I lost people today Ianto. So many people. It was a bloodbath and, god, it was my own fault.”

Jack drags his hands across his face. It pulls at the whites of his eyes. His mother always told him not to do that.

_“The wind will change and you’ll stay that way.”_

“I noticed some trouble passing through the Orion Nebula. Stopped to see what the fuss was and I made it worse. I don’t know, Ianto. But they just started tearing into each other, tearing into me. I ended up in a fight that wasn’t my own. I ended up dying and when I woke up, I was the only one alive.”

Jack’s eyes fixate on the stone. He did that, he’s sure. He stuck his nose in where it doesn’t belong and made it infinitely worse. Is he not the reason they were all slaughtered? He tried to do some good in the universe and it all backfired in his face.

“I wish you were here.” Jack sighs, gaze flickering towards the fresh scraping of earth. He pats down the edges a little more. He can’t say any more than that. It feels wrong to say it out loud, even though nobody may be listening.

What they had was private, rarely shared with the world. No one would quite understand how the two worked and that was fine. They didn’t need to be understood by anybody else except each other. On a hard evening, after a mission gone wrong, it would be Ianto Jones that took Jack down to their quarters below and made sure there was no doubt in Jack’s mind that he did everything he could have done that day.

What Jack wouldn’t give to feel Ianto’s arms around him once again, his fingers against the nape of his neck and disappearing into the beginnings of his hair. He would love nothing more than to hear those beautiful Welsh tones assuring him that everything will turn out fine, that he team will come around to his decision, that he did what he had to do and it wouldn’t make him less of a good man for doing so.

Jack has no idea how long he’s sitting there in front of that grave stone when something catches his attention. A hare bounds across the graveyard. It kicks its back legs and it twists and it leaps. Jack watches it intently, watches how it frolics without a care. It doesn’t know where it is, doesn’t know what lies beneath it’s feet. Jack craves that innocence.

He keeps his eyes trained upon the animal, sitting still so as not to frighten it from the distance. Its presence brings a calming factor to the day. Jack’s grateful for it.

The hare stops in its tracks and looks Jack dead in the eye. It takes a cautionary step forward in the grass, bounding one length of itself before taking another.

And another.

And another.

Before Jack can blink the animal is but metres away from him. Hares are larger than Jack realised, their legs pack one hell of a kick and their ears stand tall and proud. Jack’s so close he can see how its nose twitches, sensing its environment.

Jack Harkness is not a spiritual person, but Ianto Jones was.

The two didn’t veer their conversations in this direction very often. It wasn’t that they’d argue about their opinions if they did, it just wasn’t something they felt necessary to discuss. Jack knew that Ianto was a Christian, that his beliefs and relationship with God were different to the main. He knew that Ianto believed most everything happens for a reason.

The hare is still watching him, still only metres away.

Jack’s mind is reeling with thought; thoughts that he swears have no business being true. It could not be that he sits here, the first day he finds the confidence and the desire to step foot at Ianto’s gravesite that Ianto brings him a sign.

Those signs aren’t signs and he knows that. Ghosts do not exist. The afterlife is nothing. Ianto cannot see him, cannot hear him. Jack Harkness is a not spiritual person. He doesn’t believe it.

Ianto Jones _is_ a spiritual person. He believed in those signs. He believed that these moments that should not exist, that have no discernible meaning, did in fact have a sense to them. He kept it to himself more times than not, but they were there and they made him happy. Jack knew it was a way he dealt with the rough moments Torchwood threw at them.

The hare still remains and Jack’s heart softens. Tears form in his eyes until the animal before him is nothing more than a blurry shape. As he raises his hand to wipe them away, the hare does not flinch. It’s head tilts, it’s ear cocks just a little.

Ianto Jones would do anything to make sure Jack knew he was never alone in his thoughts.

Jack lets the grief take over him in a way he had refused to let it until now. It racks his body and his lungs in ugly sobs and still the hare does not move from its tracks, cleaning itself quite contently. 

Eventually the animal has it’s fill as Jack has begun to regain composure. It turns it’s back on the captain and bounds away to another part of the graveyard. Jack wipes at his eyes.

“Thank you, Ianto…” He whispers as he turns to his gaze back to the gravestone once again.

Jack Harkness is not a spiritual person, but for Ianto Jones he’ll believe in anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I wrote this fic after I lost someone of my own recently. I realised my thoughts and experience could line up with Jack's and I liked the concept so I wrote it down. I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> PS: Ianto may have died in September?? Or July? But now I'm not sure lmao. It wasn't pertinent to the story anyway so it's fiiiiiine.


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